


you are whatever a moon has always meant

by red_streaks



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: I really love the sky and the sun, I write as my titles oops, Other, also can you tell, and the moon because that's all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 13:29:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14450268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_streaks/pseuds/red_streaks
Summary: And as such, Miss Hardbroom would only hear the smeared recounting from three little witches of how it came to be that the ingredients for a levitation potion were spilled on the hallway floor, how Ethel Hallow received the purple bruise she is now sporting below her chin, or how Mildred Hubble is now, somehow, inexplicably, missing a sock.“500 lines. 'I shall not run in the halls',” she sneers, hoping that the punishment will keep the girls out of trouble for the rest of the day.If this were any other academy, in which there were not a little witch named Mildred Hubble, and another with the unfortunate name of Hallow, Miss Hardbroom would have been quite right in expecting a quiet day conducive to learning the Craft.As it is, this is no ordinary academy, and Mildred Hubble is very much still Mildred Hubble, missing sock or not.****mildred hubble consumes a personality splitting potion (enter ethel), and her other half has a few rough words with miss hardbroom





	you are whatever a moon has always meant

**Author's Note:**

> hello!!! a new fic? when i haven't updated my other multi-chap fics? yes. i'm sorry. here's 8k. this kinda got away from me and it's been sitting in my drafts for a very long time and i am very excited to finally post it!!

 

If Hecate Hardbroom were to pinpoint the exact moment she knew her night was not going to be a quiet one, she would perhaps draw your attention to the sound of Mildred Hubble’s _pat pat pat_ of her boots echoing slightly as she ran up the stairs, potion ingredients held precariously in her arms.

 

Or perhaps she would illustrate the moment when Ethel Hallow exited her dormitory, stopping briefly to adjust the bow atop her ponytail and smooth out the wrinkles of her dress before noticing the terrible, terrible time, and setting off into a light jog towards the nearest staircase.

 

Or, if Hecate Hardbroom was pressed for detail, she would begin recounting the exact second Enid Nightshade spotted Mildred Hubble struggling up the stairs and across the hall to balance the vials and boxes they were going to use to study.

 

But Miss Hardbroom, despite it being a popular rumor at Cackle’s Academy, cannot be in two places at once. And as she was currently at a staff meeting listening to Miss Bat snore, she did not witness the moment in which Enid, in a flash of chivalry, dashed forward to help her friend before she inevitably dropped something.

 

And Miss Hardbroom would not witness the moment Mildred simultaneously felt a deep rush of gratitude as she spotted Enid run towards her, and deep dread at the unfortunate slip of glass across her skin as one of the vials tumbled out of her arms, before she took off into a run to meet Enid just in the nick of time.

 

And as such, Miss Hardbroom would only hear the smeared recounting from three little witches of how it came to be that the ingredients for a levitation potion were spilled on the hallway floor, how Ethel Hallow received the purple bruise she is now sporting below her chin, or how Mildred Hubble is now, somehow, inexplicably, missing a sock.

 

“500 lines. _I shall not run in the halls_ ,” she sneers, hoping that the punishment will keep the girls out of trouble for the rest of the day.

 

If this were any other academy, in which there was not a little witch named Mildred Hubble, and another with the unfortunate name of Hallow, Miss Hardbroom would have been quite right in expecting a quiet day conducive to learning the Craft.

 

As it is, this is no ordinary academy, and Mildred Hubble is very much still Mildred Hubble, missing sock or not.

 

*

 

“It was an _accident_ ,” Mildred repeats for the thirteenth time, following a fuming Ethel into Charms. “Honestly, my mind has been so crammed with studying recipes, I couldn’t have _possibly_ planned to ruin your dress, Ethel.”

 

“Maybe if you spent more time studying instead of playing around, you wouldn’t be cramming at the last moment,” Ethel says in that voice that makes Mildred’s left eye twitch.

 

But, Mildred thinks dejectedly, she kind of has a point.

 

“I know,” she sighs and takes a look behind her where Maud is carefully taking out her neat, neat notes. “I just don’t know how to do it. I get distracted far more easily than the lot of you.”

 

“I don’t care,” Ethel responds. “Just don’t involve me in any more of your mishaps. I wouldn’t want to be associated with the _worst witch_.” And promptly turns around, nose high up in the air. Mildred gets a mouthful of blonde hair.

 

Just like that, Mildred’s day is cursed off to a terrible start.

 

It isn’t that she doesn’t try to turn it back around after the hallway accident, which _had_ been an accident, it’s that she somehow can’t get anything in her brain to connect to her mouth for the rest of the day.

 

“Pondweed, an eye of newt and…” Mildred trails off, braving a look at Miss Hardbroom’s face and quickly regretting it. “Frogspawn?”

 

Behind her, Maud groans sympathetically.

 

“Frogspawn,” Miss Hardbroom deadpans and takes a very, very deep breath. “In a re-growth spell. Incorrect.” She levels Mildred with a glare so intense, Mildred does not know what to do other than gulp. “ But I shouldn’t expect anything less from you, Mildred Hubble.”

 

“I-I meant catnip, Miss Hardbroom,” she mumbles, but not loudly enough for her teacher to hear. When Ethel answers correctly, there's a little smug look thrown her way that makes Mildred drop her head to the table.

 

“I knew the right answer,” Mildred complains as they walk out of the potions lab, shoulders slumped. “I really did.”

 

“I know, Mil,” Enid says and wraps an arm around her shoulder. “I heard you.”

 

“It’ll be better next time,” Maud pats Mildred’s shoulders, then is abruptly shoved aside by a running Drusilla.

 

“I guess I’m just distracted,” Mildred straightens out Maud’s glasses with a small smile. “I just wish there was a spell for that.”

 

Shoulders slumped and head hanging low, she misses entirely the way Ethel Hallow looks over her shoulder, a calculated look settling dangerously over her face.

 

(And if Miss Hardbroom had been privy to this conversation, if she believed in fate and its finicky comings and goings, she would perhaps look at this moment as the catalyst to a series of unfortunate, catastrophic events.)

 

*

 

(But, unfortunately for Mildred, Miss Hardbroom is not, and so the rest unravels at a speed that not even Miss Drill can keep up with.)

 

“Don’t touch that,” Maud says simply.

 

“Slip it into Drusilla’s plate. I bet she’d eat it. She almost ate _me_ ,” Enid shrugs and pokes at the offending object with her fork.

 

“Maybe just…eat it?” Sybil says a quaint look on her face that’s the perfect mixture of apprehension and hope. “I’m sure she meant what she said.”

 

_It_ is the tastefully decorated cupcake that’s sitting in front of Mildred at the dining hall table.

 

_She_ is one prickly, haughty Ethel Hallow, now making her way back to the opposite end of the hall to sit back at her table after unceremoniously handing Mildred a cupcake.

 

_Let’s start over, shall we? It’s not like you can help being as terrible as you are. Here, a treat for good luck_.

 

“An apology? From _Ethel_? Sorry, Sybil, but I don’t think we’re in the right realm for that.” Enid scoffs.

 

“A realm? Like a universe?”

 

“Millie,” Maud says exasperatedly, completely ignoring her question and knocking the cupcake aside. ”Don’t listen to Sybil. She has to say nice things because Ethel is her sister.”

 

“She probably doused it in poison, or spelled it to give you gas.”

 

“Mildred, Ethel _never_ apologizes. Not even to Esmeralda, and she’s the oldest. I think she must really mean it if she baked you a treat.” Sybil leans over her plate, eyes wide and pleading.

 

Mildred cringes slightly, her lower teeth showing rather awkwardly. “I don’t know…”

 

“Please, aren’t you trying to make amends with her? Shouldn’t you at least let her try?” Sybil says eyebrows pinched together in an unfair manner.

 

Mildred sighs what might possibly be the deepest sigh of her life.

 

“Sybil’s right. I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt. Everybody deserves that, right?” And without further warning, she grabs the cupcake and happily fits half of it in her mouth. “Oh, it’s really good. What’s the worst that can happen from something that tastes _this_ good?”

 

“Oh, no,” Enid lowers her head to her forearm, slumping dramatically.

 

“Mildred, what have you _done_?” Maud’s eyes have gone very, very large.

 

Really, Mildred thinks, why is everybody being so negative?

 

What’s the _worst_ that can happen at this point? 

 

*

 

The worst, Mildred comes to find, is that halfway through lunch she feels a funny tug at her heart as if somebody placed their hand through her back and tried yanking her heart out through her ribs.

 

The feeling passes after several seconds, but her palms are clammy and her fingertips are cold, and she feels like she could throw up all of the contents of her stomach. She isn’t going to, because Enid and Maud keep giving her odd looks like they’re daring her to prove them right, but she _could_.

 

“I’m…going to revise,” she pushes her plate aside and ignores Enid and Maud’s large eyes in favor of putting one foot in front of the other without tripping. Her head feels heavy, like she’s replaced her brain with wet cotton.

 

“Are you alright, Mildred?” She hears Sybil ask, her voice pitched high and nervous. “You look a little funny.”

 

“Fine!” Mildred responds, doesn’t bother to turn around. If she could just make it to the door, maybe she could go up to her room and rest a little. She just doesn’t want to deal with Maud’s smug twist of her mouth when she finds out Ethel’s cupcake upset her.

 

“Mildred Hubble,” a clipped, soft voice makes her shiver. “I know you like to think yourself above the rules, but if your classmates have not been released from lunch, you may not leave either.”

 

_So close_ , Mildred thinks, looking past Miss Hardbroom’s shoulder at the door that leads to the corridors.

 

“Um,” she stutters and tries to come up with an excuse before she throws up all over Miss Hardbroom’s shoes. But her head is so heavy and she’s beginning to feel very cold. “I don’t feel so well,” she tries going with the truth and hopes this time it works.

 

“You do not look flushed,” Miss Hardbroom responds, looking down at Mildred with a sneer. She flicks her hand over Mildred’s face and she feels warm magic flood her senses, realizes too late that Miss Hardbroom is casting a quick Wellness spell.

 

“I just need to step into the bathroom, really quickly,” she mumbles, and ducks under her teacher’s arm to rush out the dining hall. She ignores the odd squawk that comes out of Miss Hardbroom’s mouth and quickly clamps her hand over her mouth and rounds a corner.

 

She isn’t going to make it to her dormitory.

 

“Oh, no,” she murmurs, and opens the nearest bathroom door with a loud bang and tries not to fall to her knees in front of the sink.

 

“Alright,” she tries calming herself. “So Ethel poisoned you, that’s cool.” She dry-heaves into the sink and braces her hands over the linoleum. Nothing comes up her throat but her frame is shivering and her head feels like it's being split in two.

 

Suddenly, her heart tugs hard against her ribs again, and Mildred closes her eyes against the pain. She doesn’t dare open them back up until she feels like she can breathe without it feeling like there are shards of glass rattling inside her lungs.

 

The pain recedes without warning, just like that.

 

When her eyes open, she sees her knuckles are white and red. She turns on the tap and splashes water against her face, blindly reaches for a paper towel and peers into the mirror.

 

And chokes on her own saliva at what she sees.

 

The bathroom door opens with a clang and the sound vibrates deep in Mildred’s ears.

 

“Millie?” Maud says, voice tight.

 

“Oh, my god,” she says, ignoring everything but the reflection in the mirror.

 

“Yes? What is it, Maud?”

 

That’s Mildred’s voice. That’s Mildred’s voice coming out of Mildred’s mouth, which is attached to Mildred’s head, which is attached to Mildred’s _body_.

 

But that is _not_ her, because Mildred is standing in front of the sink, whereas the girl that looks like the spitting image of Mildred is standing directly behind her with her hands clasped innocently in front of her.

 

“Oh, my _god_ ,” Mildred says again and cringes when the girl – her, _Mildred_ , -- smiles at her.

 

“Mildred?” She hears Enid speak, and tears her eyes away from the mirror to look at her two friends. Maud and Enid stand in front of the white door and they have matching expressions of horror. “Which one is she?” Enid’s never been very good at whispering.

 

Mildred takes a look at the girl standing next to her and watches as she bends down and tugs her right sock up so it’s at the same height as the other.

 

“That’s better,” the impostor says, in Mildred’s voice, and something inside Mildred simply snaps.

 

“Holy crap! I mean, _bats_! I mean, -“ Mildred screams again, falls backward and trips on her shoelaces. 

 

“That one,” Maud and Enid say at the same time.

 

“That’s _me_!” Mildred points from her spot on the floor to the serene replica of her. “There’s another me, right there. You see her, too, right?”

 

Mildred might be hyperventilating, possibly, but she knows she’s definitely sweating.

 

“Yes,” Maud frowns and takes a step forward to extend a hand down to Mildred. “Are you Mildred? Or somebody else?”

 

“I’m hardly _your_ Mildred,” the girl says, and her face contorts into something ugly. It takes her a second to realize it’s a sneer, the twist of her lips so unfamiliar to Mildred.

 

“You’re not her,” Enid steps between Mildred and her haughty imposter, and crosses her arms. “Who are you, really? Are you Ethel?”

 

The girl scoffs and flips a braid behind her back. “No, I’m not Ethel Hallow. Although that would certainly be an improvement for _you_.” She gives Mildred a pointed look.

 

“Well, then, who are you?” Maud throws her hands up in the air. Her head swims again and when her vision goes blurry, she has to lean heavily on Enid’s arm. She thinks she was better off sitting on the floor.

 

“I already told you,” the girl crosses her arms tightly over her chest. “I’m Mildred Hubble. An _improved_ Mildred Hubble. Or at least, one that is not an embarrassment.”

 

The girl looks over at Mildred and raises her eyebrow in a near perfect imitation of Miss Hardbroom.

 

“What?”

 

“I took everything that you disliked about yourself and got rid of it.” She shrugs one shoulder. “It was rather easy. You have a lot of insecurities, it wasn’t difficult to split us apart.”

 

“You- you came from Mildred?” Enid shakes her head, and her mouth falls open. “Like, you’re a part of her?”

 

“No, you idiot,” the girl rolls her eyes. “I’m no longer _a part_ of Mildred. I took all the good things about Mildred that she’s never had the courage to use, and split us apart. I left the boring, ugly bits inside of her, and took the good ones with me.”

 

“I didn’t feel that,” Mildred whispers, and brings a hand up to her rest above her heart. “I don’t feel any different.”

 

“That’s because you don’t miss the things you don’t use, silly.” The girl scoffs. “You’ve never been focused, or very bright. You’re just used to being lazy and having things handed to you.”

 

_That’s not true_ , Mildred wants to say, but a tiny part of her, the part that rears its ugly head after a particularly bad day where she can’t make anything go right, that part whispers _she’s right._

 

“But I didn’t want to get rid of anything about myself,” Mildred whispers, feels light on her feet. “I didn’t even know you existed inside of me.”

 

“Well, it doesn’t matter what you want,” the girl says and sniffs daintily. “It happened, and there isn’t anything you can do about it.”

 

“B-but,” Mildred sways, tries very hard to focus. “But we can’t have two Mildred’s going to classes.”

 

The girl’s face clouds over with something dark and scary. “Exactly,” she says pointedly.

 

The last thing Mildred sees before she’s pulled under is the smug smile on the other girl’s face, one that she’s seen in pictures and in videos, but never like this.

 

No, never quite like this.

 

*

 

Miss Hardbroom’s first thought is that Mildred must have cheated, somehow.

 

A near perfect essay on the basic transfiguration of an inanimate object to a living one sits in front of her. Mildred’s hand-writing is different today; it still loops at the end and has odd, jagged lines in some places, but it is almost completely legible. For once.

 

Miss Hardbroom frowns, turns the paper over and purses her lips when she can’t find anything out of place. She is not surprised at the progress Mildred exhibits in the paper, but she is surprised that it has come sooner than she thought it would.

 

If this paper would have been submitted two years from now, perhaps less, Miss Hardbroom wouldn’t have been surprised. As it is, Mildred’s last essay was dipped in something blue, smelled oddly of rice, and was seventy-five lines shorter than it should have been.

 

“What are you up to now, Mildred Hubble,” Miss Hardbroom mutters, closes her eyes and finds Mildred exiting the library with Ethel Hallow, of all people.

 

_I knew you would agree with my methods_ , she hears Ethel say smugly and is surprised to see Mildred link her arm with Ethel’s.

 

She stops herself from transferring Mildred to her lab, if only because she’s starting to notice things she didn’t earlier today. She wasn’t present when the girls wrote their essay after lunch, but she’s sure that Mildred had been wearing her usual braids.

 

Now though, the girl has one tight braid that swings behind her back. Missing are the fly-aways that Mildred never bothers to smooth down, and her sash is tied on the right side – something that Mildred never does.

 

_You should have seen her face when I told her who I was_ , Miss Hardbroom hears Mildred say. The girls laugh together and somehow, inexplicably, Miss Hardbroom feels something dreadful twist in her stomach at the odd image.

 

“That’s quite enough of that,” she says to nobody in particular and waits until the girls part to transfer Mildred into the chair in front of her desk.

 

Mildred blinks, looks down at her lap as if to make sure her legs have followed, and looks up brightly.

 

“Miss Hardbroom,” the girl greets her right away as if she’s unsurprised that she’s found herself in the lab. She doesn’t even look queasy after the transference. “How are you?”

 

“Perplexed,” she answers honestly and frowns at the way Mildred smiles pleasantly.

 

“Is something wrong?” She doesn’t _look_ guilty, Miss Hardbroom notices. But then again, Mildred Hubble has gotten very good at lying her way out of trouble.

 

“That’s what I’d like to know, Mildred,” she places her essay in front of her and waits until the girl takes her eyes off her to twist her fingers under the desk and cast a quick Revealing spell. When her magic comes back empty-handed, Miss Hardbroom’s frown deepens.

 

Her magic usually responds aggressively towards Mildred’s because of the girl’s lack of control, but today it’s as if her magic is dormant- _asleep_. 

 

“Did I not answer the prompt?” Mildred scans her paper. “I was sure I answered it correctly, Miss Hardbroom.”

 

She recognizes the words, as they are words that the girl speaks often, but does not recognize the conviction or confidence behind them.

 

“You answered it,” she concedes, tilts her head to catch the girl’s eyes. “But your writing voice has…changed.”

 

“I’ve been practicing,” Mildred says, looks to the left for one brief second before meeting Miss Hardbroom’s eyes confidently again.

 

_There it is_ , she thinks and leans forward.

 

“Practicing how?”

 

“You know,” she shrugs, looks away again. “I’ve just started listening to your advice.”

 

“Mildred,” she says and feels sharp relief when the girl cowers in front of her. She had begun to believe the girl in front of her wasn’t Mildred. “You know the punishment for lying.”

 

A week of afternoon detention. Still, the girl merely shrugs her shoulders.

 

“I’m _not_ lying. Is it really so surprising that I’m improving?”

 

_Yes_ , she wants to say but thinks that is too harsh. It isn’t surprising, she finally decides, but can’t shake the feeling that there is something off about Mildred today.

 

“Are you saying that if I use a Revealing spell on your paper, I will not find any tinkering?”

 

Mildred bites her lip. She nods sharply, twice. 

 

Miss Hardbroom does not want to use the spell. She wants to hand Mildred the essay, throw in a clipped _adequate job_ , and move on with her day. But Mildred won’t meet her eye and Miss Hardbroom does not like how she’s unable to detect Mildred’s clean magic.

 

She inhales and mutters the words under her breath, extends her hand over the essay and wills the truth to reveal itself. Something black and wispy comes off the parchment and Miss Hardbroom allows it to travel the space between her desk and her nose before she inhales it deeply.

 

Black. Tangled.

 

“You lied,” Miss Hardbroom says after a long beat, and tries not to inflect the disappointment she feels into her voice.

 

“I didn’t, not really,” Mildred says, the words tripping against her tongue, stands up taller in her chair.

 

“You didn’t write this essay, Mildred Hubble.” This isn’t her magic. The magic coming off the parchment is _wrong_ , it sits against Miss Hardbroom’s magic like black oil and heavy smoke. It makes her skin crawl and her throat close up.

 

“I did!” Mildred stands up suddenly, rounds the chair and stomps her foot. “I wrote it. It has my name and everything.”

 

“Tell me the truth, Mildred, or I’ll be forced to make it a month of detention.” Miss Hardbroom stands up with her, feels her anger rise-up and expel what remains of Mildred’s magic out of her. She feels better instantly, like she can breathe.

 

“You’re not going to believe me, anyway.” Mildred kicks at the floor. “You’ll say ‘ _Mildred Hubble, I cannot believe you are still at this academy_ ,’ and then send me off to my room without knowing how much that _hurt_.”

 

A wave of guilt makes Hecate stand taller and open her mouth to retort something cutting. But she takes a look at Mildred’s face and there’s no anger, no disappointment or broken pride. There’s only a quiet resignation that makes Hecate swallow thickly.

 

“How do you know I won’t believe you?” Still, she tries denying it, as if she’s another second-year and cannot face her mistakes. She almost takes her words back, but Mildred shoots her an incredulous look, anger settling back into the thin lines of her frown.

 

“You _never_ believe me! Not when Ethel cut my hair off, _or_ when she switched Midnight and Tabby, _or_ when she stole my summer project, _or_ when she enchanted my broom, _or_ when she tried to sabotage my exams!” Mildred’s face has gone very red and her voice rises and rises until she’s nearly shouting.

 

Miss Hardbroom’s lip twitches uncomfortably. When put like that, it’s hard to ignore that Mildred’s indiscretions always surrounds _one_ other person.

 

“You don’t want to believe me! You _never_ want to listen to me!” She continues yelling, small fists curled at her sides and her eyes blurring by the second. “Why don’t you ever just _try_ with me?”

 

She says this last part in a very small voice and she swipes at her eyes harshly, irritating her face even further.

 

“Stop that,” she says, the words falling from her mouth out of pure instinct. The girl rolls her eyes and sniffles but does what she’s told. Miss Hardbroom feels something very tight take a hold of her heart, and if she thinks about it too hard, it might resemble something like regret.

 

“Mildred,” she says after a short pause and considers kneeling to the young witch’s eye level before deciding against it.

 

“Oh, don’t even bother,” Mildred snaps, and crosses her arms. “You’re probably just going to use this as another reason why I should be expelled.”

 

_Not expelled_ , she thinks. _Not anymore._

 

It’s true. In the beginning, before she even knew that Mildred’s favorite and worst subject is potions, that her favorite thing to draw is trees, and that she owns thirteen different kinds of fingerless gloves, Hecate Hardbroom had wanted nothing more than to save the already precocious standing of her school by keeping Mildred out.

 

She hadn’t even wanted to learn those things about the girl, but Mildred has spent so much time in detention and so much time explaining her way out of situations that little tidbits of information have stuck.

_Well, you see, Tabby keeps nibbling at my gloves when I’m not there so I tried an invisibility potion but then I forgot where I placed them and that’s really the only reason I didn’t notice when one fell in the cauldron, Miss Hardbroom. ‘Cause it’s **invisible**._

 

_And the one in Miss Tapioca’s soup?_

_Well…I have a lot of gloves, Miss Hardbroom. Fifteen, to be exact. Or, well, I guess thirteen now. And a half._

 

“You know, the other Mildred,” the young witch starts, startling Hecate into attention. “The other Mildred doesn’t deserve that. She does things because she cares. Like how she took the blame for the time Maud accidentally created a sneezing potion instead of a hair regrowth, just because she knew Maud wouldn’t have time to study if she got detention.”

 

Mildred crosses and uncrosses her arms, looks about the room as if she doesn’t know quite what to do with her body.

 

_The other Mildred?_

 

“That Mildred just wants to fit in somewhere. Sometimes, she thinks she fits in best with you. But that’s before you scream at her and make her feel dumb.”

 

“And you’re not that Mildred?” Miss Hardbroom is beginning to have a queasy feeling in her stomach at the anger that she spots in the young witch, so unfamiliar an emotion in her eyes that Miss Hardbrom almost doesn’t recognize it.

 

“No,” she scoffs. “I’m really, really not. I don’t care what _you_ think about me. I don’t care about what any of the adults here think about me.”

 

It’s starting to become unsettling watching Mildred’s face cloud over with anger and resentment. She’s beginning to sound like someone, someone Miss Hardbroom can’t quite place.

 

“Then you won’t mind me saying that some of the concerns we – that _I've_ had surrounding you are valid? Your blatant disregard for authority and the rules are what gets you into trouble time and time again, Mildred. This, you cannot deny.”

 

“Well, maybe if somebody believed in me - in the _other_ Mildred – then she wouldn’t have so much trouble doing the right thing in the first place.”

 

“A witch takes _responsibility_ , Mil-“

 

“Then take it!” Suddenly, Mildred explodes. It starts with her eyes, blown wide and angry, down to her cheeks, red as apples and streaked with tears, to her feet thrown wide apart, and ends with her arms outstretched, reaching for something Miss Hardbroom can’t possibly follow. “Take responsibility for _once_! I’m just, I-I I don’t know what I’m doing! I don’t! I just need-!  I just want -! _Why won’t anybody help me?!”_

 

“Mildred,” Miss Hardbroom breathes and then falls silent. She doesn’t know what to do when a child starts crying, never knows if they want her out of all people to comfort them, and she looks on with silent apprehension as Mildred’s eyes begin to water.

 

“You – you don’t want me here. Nobody wants me here and this-this isn’t even something I knew I wanted until I got it. I don’t want to leave. I want this so much.” She takes a steadying breath and looks Miss Hardbroom in the eye. “Please don’t make me leave.”

 

“Nobody is making you leave, Mildred.” This time, Miss Hardbroom materializes a chair and sits. “You are the only one who chooses the path you take.”

 

“You don’t _get_ it. I knew you wouldn’t,” Mildred scoffs, switching back to a sullen and sulking child.

 

“Then tell me,” Miss Hardbroom stands up, suddenly has too much energy to sit still. Mildred is throwing a tantrum and she will not be subjected to it for much longer. “Tell me why you think you are failing.”

 

Mildred looks at her, eyes narrow and red. She appraises Miss Hardbroom for a long, long time before she visibly bites the inside of her cheek and stands taller.

 

“You didn’t even give me a chance to try during the Spelling Bee,” she begins and rolls her eyes when Miss Hardbroom opens her mouth to interrupt. “You said, ‘ _This is precisely what happens when you let in a girl from a non-witching family into the academy_ ,’ before we started, before I even messed up. And then you didn’t even let me do anything.”

 

Mildred shakes her head and her braids go flying. Miss Hardbroom presses her thumb to her pinky and tries taking a steadying breath.

 

“Then, you all threw me under the bus when the Great Wizard was here! You said the school was more important than my education and – and, well, aren’t I a witch, too?! I’ve earned my spot!”

 

“But in the beginning, Mildred –“

 

“Just _listen_ ,” she wails and stomps her foot. “Just listen to me!”

 

Normally, Miss Hardbroom would have sneered and snapped her fingers to transfer them to Miss Cackles office, but this…

 

This side of Mildred quite honestly frightens Miss Hardbroom.

 

“Alright,” she says slowly, sits back down and folds her hands over her lap. “I am listening, Mildred Hubble. I am.” She tilts her head in her direction and waits.

 

There’s a change, small but noticeable, in Mildred at those words. Her shoulders drop and she lets out a breath as if she’d been waiting her whole life to let go.

 

“Even the Great Wizard didn’t believe in me and you _agreed_ with him when he said I was a danger to the academy. The only one who believed in me was Agatha.  And only because she knew I would eventually do something to really get Miss Cackle into trouble.”

 

Mildred’s nose scrunches up as if she’s trying very hard not to cry.

 

Miss Hardbroom distinctly remembers the fear that had overcome her when the Great Wizard had handed Mildred the anonymous letter. She had been preoccupied with the standing of the school and of Ada’s position, but she never once gave a second thought at why Mildred’s shoulders had been hunched up to her ears, or how her legs had dangled sadly over the armchair.

 

_You mean to tell me this girl is not a witch?_

 

Miss Hardbroom feels like something heavy is sinking down inside herself, past her timepiece and her belt, past her knees. Something horribly ugly settles by her feet.

 

She has an image, so suddenly vivid in her mind that she shakes her head to rid herself of it. Mildred, sitting in Miss Hardbroom’s office with her chin tucked into her chest and braids dangling limply as she listens to every mistake she’s done being read from Miss Hardbroom’s journal during Parent’s Night.

 

“Nobody tells me _why_ I’ve done something wrong, only that I’ve done it wrong because I’m not truly a witch. Nobody helps me and then _everybody_ is surprised when I don’t improve!” Mildred says the last word with such venom that Miss Hardbroom flinches. “I’m eleven years behind! Nobody even suggested I should be in tutoring until I failed that first semester. Mum says - Isn’t that something an _adult_ should look out for?”

 

_Yes_ , Miss Hardbroom thinks, and then has the sudden, dreadful thought that that adult should have been her.

 

“You make me feel different. _Undesirable_. Sometimes I don’t even want to try because I know I’ll do it wrong anyway.” All of her anger suddenly seems to leave Mildred and her shoulders drop heavily.

 

Miss Hardbroom’s heart jumps in a way she didn’t even think possible. She remembers the frightful nights when she would stay up late reading under the covers because she was afraid of what her father would say once he’d learn all the ways she was lacking. How discouraged she’d been to even try. How she tried anyway, just like Mildred keeps coming back.

 

The problem with Mildred, Miss Hardbroom thinks, is she has no direction with her magic. And that responsibility does not fall solely on her.

 

“But I _do_ try,” Mildred keeps going, looking at a spot somewhere behind Miss Hardbroom. “I swear I do try. I don’t care what you lot think. I’m not perfect, but I am trying.”

 

This time, Mildred cannot help the tears that fall and Miss Hardbroom cannot help but stand up from her chair and curl her fingers over thin air, almost reaching out.

 

“Mildred,” she whispers and the young witch looks up at her with dark, dark eyes. “Mildred, I…”

 

She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t even feel like standing at the moment. If she were anything other than an adult in charge of this child in front of her, she would have very much liked to transfer away.

 

Mildred scoffs, the sound loud and jarring in the room. She rolls her eyes and swipes at her tears.

 

“Whatever,” she tries saying, but her voice is wobbly and she suddenly won’t meet Miss Hardbroom’s eyes.

 

“No,” Miss Hardbroom shakes her head. “No, Mildred.”

 

She wants to say _No, Mildred you are not wrong_. Or, _Mildred, it was never my intention to make you feel undesirable._

But all that comes out of her mouth is gibberish.

 

They stay like that, Miss Hardbroom standing uncomfortably and grasping for the right kind of words, and Mildred hunched in on herself, sulking and looking at everywhere but Miss Hardbroom’s eyes.

 

“If I am harsh with you it is because I believe you can do so much better,” Miss Hardbroom says, and instantly regrets it. She sounds like a first-year making up excuses for her behavior. “But that has not worked, has it?”

 

“W-what?” Mildred’s mouth falls open and her shoulders drop, but before she can say anything else, something odd occurs.

 

The tips of Mildred’s braids suddenly begin to fade, hair by hair, bit by bit.

 

“Mildred?” Miss Hardbroom’s hands shot out, but never land.

 

“Miss Hardbroom, something strange is – Miss Hardbroom?” Mildred’s eyes find hers and she has a glimpse of the fear reflecting back on brown eyes before Mildred disappears entirely.

 

She shouts her name once more and turns around, searching for the girl. When she doesn’t find her in the room, she trips on her long skirt and trips off balance before she remembers she’s a _witch_ and should start acting like one. She straightens herself with a small push of magic and easily finds Mildred with a Locator spell. Taking a deep, deep breath Miss Hardbroom transfers away.

 

 Every grey hair on her head is the result of this child, _she swears_.

 

*

 

Mildred feels like she fell off her broomstick, landed on thirty-six million swords, and then had a truck fall on her.

 

“She’s awake!” she hears somewhere to her right, and groans at how loud Enid sounds.

 

“Shut up,” she croaks and throws her arm over her eyes. “Please, please be _quiet_.”

 

“Oh, Millie,” Maud breathes out, and she feels the bed dip by her feet. “I am so glad you’re back.”

 

“Where did I go?” She grumbles and feels around her bed to where she knows her covers must be. She feels cold all over.

 

“No, no – you can’t have any covers on you, Millie,” Maud says a little more quietly. “The spell said you had to break the fever.”

 

“But I’m cold,” she shivers dramatically, hoping Enid might take pity on her and give her a blanket.

 

“Just a couple more hours, Mil, I promise,” Enid says. “The worst has passed, anyway.”

 

Her friends’ voices are very soft. They’re not whispering like they know her head is pounding – they sound scared. Mildred peers under her arm and notices that Maud’s ponytails are extra bunchy and her face looks sweaty.

 

“What- what happened?”

 

“Do you remember anything?” Maud leans forward. Mildred looks at her, blinks in the evening light that’s filtering through the window and only then spots Enid sitting by the window sill, knees brought up against her chest and her cheek resting against them.

 

“No,” Mildred whispers. “I think…Ethel baked me something. A-and, was Miss Hardbroom there?”

 

She remembers sitting in front of her desk. Something dark and blurry making her stomach flip. But her head is still pounding and she’s still so cold, so she shakes her head slightly and tries to sit up.

 

“You should stay down,” Enid is on her feet in an instant, and Mildred is so startled that she actually listens.

 

She’s never seen them like this, not even when Agatha casted the Annihilation Spell, or when the Great Wizard wanted to test her.

 

“Alright,” she says slowly and nudges Maud with her foot. “What spell were you talking about?”

 

Muad looks at Enid. Enid looks at her shoes. Mildred feels dread slither down her spine.

 

“It’s an antidote,” is all Maud supplies.

 

“O-kay,” Mildred takes her arm off her head and turns to look at Enid. “An antidote for what? What’s going on here?”

 

“We told you not to eat the stupid cupcake, Millie,” Enid comes forward and kneels beside her bed. Her chin rests over Mildred’s arms and she can feel her jaw move every time she opens her mouth. “Ethel hexed it during lunch, and you ate it and then you went running off.”

 

She remembers a tug, right in that spot between her shoulder blades- sharp and painful.

 

“I remember that,” she frowns, tries to piece together why they look so grave and pale. “But I-I don’t remember the rest. Why can’t I remember?”

 

She feels panic take hold of her and it doesn’t mix well with her headache or her chills. What happened to her? To her friends?

 

“Well, I don’t really know,” Maud shrugs, fiddles with her glasses and shrugs again.

 

“But what was in the cupcake? What did I eat?”

 

There’s a long stretch of silence. Mildred looks between Maud and Enid but neither of them will look her in the eye.

 

“A personality-splitting potion,” Enid says, finally. Her voice is like smoke.

 

“Remember when Ethel duplicated herself over and over and over?” Mildred nods. “Well, that’s sort of what happened. There were two of you. Only, you weren’t really you.”

 

“Two of me? There was another me?”

 

That’s never good, Mildred thinks. She gets into enough trouble just by herself, she doesn’t want to think of the kind of accidents her other self might have gotten into.

 

“Kind of,” Maud shrugs again. “You were…you, only different.”

 

“How?” Mildred gets the feeling they don’t really want to tell her, not really.

 

Enid chews her lip and Maud fixes her glasses unnecessarily. “Was I annoying?”

 

“No,” Enid sighs, gets up and sits by Mildred’s knee. “You were different. Like, you were confident and hung out with Ethel and you knew every answer in class.”

 

“That doesn’t sound terrible, except for Ethel,” Mildred says, but gets the feeling that they’re leaving something out.

 

“It wasn’t just that, Millie,” Maud says. “You…it’s like you lost yourself. Or you _were_ yourself, only without the good parts. And you kept saying that, that you left behind all the things that made you bad. You split your personality.”

 

Mildred understands even less. But as Maud speaks, she remembers being in the bathroom with its white walls and the way her voice would bounce off them spectacularly.

 

_I took everything that you disliked about yourself and got rid of it._

 

“Oh,” Mildred feels small, like she could fit into the cracks of the floor and disappear forever. “Did you- did you like her? The other me?”

 

She doesn’t want to hear the answer. She was probably smarter, the other Mildred. More focused and organized, and she probably wouldn’t get her friends into as much trouble and she wouldn’t get nervous around magic and she would know everything there is to know about being a witch.

 

The other Mildred would have been a proper witch. Mildred wishes she hadn’t woken up so soon because the other her would have truly impressed some people, instead of what Mildred knows how to do best: disappoint.

 

“No!” Enid and Maud shout at the same time, and Mildred lifts her head just in time to see two little witches launch themselves at her.

 

“No, _never_ ,” Enid says, head tucked into Mildred’s shoulder. “I promise, she was awful, Mildred. She was just a know-it-all.”

 

“And she was confident but so arrogant, Millie—she was nothing like you. And you’re _perfect_.” Maud wraps her arm around her shoulder and bumps her forehead against Mildred’s.

 

“Just the way you are,” Enid finishes, and Mildred feels her eyes tear up and her throat close.

 

“You didn’t like her best?”

 

“Nope,” Maud shakes her head.

 

“No way. She wouldn’t even laugh at me when I sang out of tune.”

 

Mildred chuckles wetly and hugs her friends close to her, feels the warmth of their hugs seep into her shaking frame and sighs contentedly when they hug back just as fiercely.

 

“Wait, didn’t I pass out in the bathroom?” She opens her eyes and begins to smile. “Did you drag me up here?”

 

“Maud hit your head against the door,” Enid says, and shrieks when Maud grabs Mildred’s pillows and hits her over the head.

 

Mildred laughs and laughs, and doesn’t stop laughing until her sides hurt and her cheeks feel like they might fall off from exhaustion.

 

There’s a sound like the crack of a whip, and Mildred knows before she sees that Miss Hardbroom’s suddenly in the room.

 

“Mildred. _Hu-bble_.” She hears Miss Hardbroom’s voice before she sees her, and Mildred really wishes she had that blanket to hide under at the moment.

 

“Hi,” she peers over Maud’s shoulder and wiggles her fingers in a greeting. “I’m sorry I left, Miss Hardbroom, I wasn’t feeling well.”

 

Miss Hardbroom sputters for a good couple of seconds, and Mildred sees that her eyes are slightly lined with red and that her lipstick is faded, like when Mum forgets she put some on in the morning and accidentally wipes at her mouth.

 

“You cannot just leave in the middle of a conversation!” Miss Hardbroom walks to the foot of her bed and clutches at the metal frame with both hands. “I do not care how upset you are!”

 

“I wasn’t aware we were having a… conversation?” Mildred says, looking between Miss Hardbroom and Maud. “I’ve been here? In bed?”

 

“Mildred’s been gone, Miss Hardbroom,” Maud gets u from the bed and takes a step towards Miss Hardbroom, wringing her hands.

 

“She was just in the potions lab with me,” Miss Hardbroom says, and eyes Mildred strangely. She looks slightly off-kilter, like she’s been running around for the past half-hour. A very hazy image pops into her mind, one where Miss Hardroom is looking at her with a pained expression on her face and – are they in the potion’s lab?

 

“That was um, Mildred, yes, but uh…”

 

“You see, the thing is that, um Mildred…”

 

Both Enid and Maud look at each other with big round eyes before Mildred herself interjects with a small voice.

 

“That was probably the _other_ me,” she says, and plays with a loose thread in the sheets. “I accidentally, um, made a personality-splitting potion in class. And, well, I fell unconscious after lunch and have just barely woken up.”

 

“I’m sorry, Miss Hardbroom,” Maud laments, pushing her glasses up. “We thought we could catch the other Mildred and reverse the spell before the night was over.”

 

“A personality-splitting potion?” Miss Hardbroom’s voice is very high. “A personality. Splitting. _Potion_.”

 

Very, very high.

 

“Yes,” Mildred hangs her head, wonders what the other Mildred said to Miss Hardbroom to have her rush into her dormitory unannounced.

 

“Why didn’t you just _say_ something, girls?” Miss Hardbroom does not usually throw her arms up in exasperation or look towards the ceiling for guidance, but Mildred watches as the usually put-together witch does just that. “She could have stayed split if you hadn’t reversed it before the night was up!”

 

“Uh,” they say in unison and Miss Hardbroom looks like she might actually combust into flames before she takes a steadying breath and spreads her hands in front of her. Mildred feels a jolt of her magic spring forward like it wants to break out from under her skin.

 

“It truly is you, Mildred Hubble,” she says in the gravest voice she has, but there’s less tension in her shoulders than there was before. She looks…almost relieved? “Did you make this potion or did somebody give it to you.”

 

“ _Uh_ ,” Mildred repeats and looks sideways. There’s a pause in which Maud looks at Mildred and Mildred looks at the wall and Enid looks between the two of them, biting her lip.

 

“ _She didn’t make it_ ,” Enid blurts out suddenly. “Ethel Hallow slipped it into a pastry and said it would help Mildred study.”

 

Miss Hardbroom closes her eyes and Mildred bites her lip anxiously, watches how pink smoke comes out of her ears and how her hands are trembling just slightly.

 

“I’m sorry,” Mildred whispers, looks down at her lap.

 

“Is this true?” Miss Hardbroom won’t open her eyes. “Is it true, Mildred?”

 

She can’t really open her mouth without wanting to cry, so she nods dejectedly and hopes Miss Hardbroom understands. She took Ethel’s side during the whole summer project fiasco, and she didn’t punish her when Ethel cut off Mildred’s hair, so Mildred is not really expecting anything other than a “ _And what did you do to deserve that, Mildred?”_

 

Instead, Miss Hardbroom opens her eyes slowly, rounds the bed to stand directly next to the three of them, and says,

 

“I believe you.”

 

Three little heads snap up to look at their teacher in bewilderment.

 

“Miss Hardbroom?” Mildred whispers.

 

“Brewing an antidote for a personality-splitting potion is very powerful magic indeed. In the future, you should not attempt such a feat without supervision, do you understand? I want your cauldrons and ingredients back to the lab, _immediately_.”

 

Maud and Enid nod fervently.

 

“You will likely remain tired and sluggish until tomorrow evening, Mildred. Rest up.” Miss Hardbroom straightens her shoulders and seems to find the composure she was so lacking before. “Now, I really must find Ethel Hallow.”

 

 “W-wait,” Mildred reaches forward. “You- you. You won’t—“

 

She can’t explain it. She’s even a bit embarrassed to say it, but Miss Hardbroom seems to understand because she shakes her head and says, “Tampering with another witch’s body is a serious offense, Mildred Hubble.”

 

“Yeah, but…” she looks off to the side, stomach twisting just at the thought of Ethel’s punishment and how she might retaliate.

 

Miss Hardbroom smiles slightly and Mildred blinks back in surprise – is so startled that she smiles back automatically.

 

“The other Mildred,” Miss Hardbroom shakes her head again. “She didn’t hold a candle over you, Mildred Hubble.” And with a twist of her wrist, she transfers right out of the room.

 

*

 

If Hecate Hardbroom were to pinpoint the exact moment she knew Mildred Hubble showed promising improvement, she would perhaps draw your attention to the tutoring sessions she held twice a week, or to the mirrored conversations she had with one Miss Pippa Pentangle on the various benefits and drawbacks to modern magic and its application to witches from the Ordinary World.

 

Or perhaps, because she enjoys her privacy more than anything else, she would draw your attention to the _pat pat pat_ of Mildred Hubble’s boots, echoing slightly across the corridor as she balanced a stack of books in her thin arms.

 

Or, if she were the type of person to wax poetry out of frivolous things, she would illustrate an empty classroom on the opposite end of the hallway; the kind of classroom she usually reserves to hold the most boring and well-deserved detentions – a classroom Mildred Hubble passes by and does not enter.

 

Or, perhaps she would illustrate the worried lines of Sybil Hallow’s narrow face as she sits at the foot of the stairs, satchel sitting by her feet and the nervous drum of her fingers against her knees: beat beat beat.

 

But, despite it being a popular rumor at the academy, a rumor Miss Hardbroom neither denies nor confirms, she cannot be at two places at once, and as she is currently marking Mildred Hubble’s final term paper with a red quill – a bright and loopy 87% written on one corner – Hecate Hardbroom would not witness Maud Spellbody step out of her dormitory and double check that she has the necessary books in her satchel before pushing her glasses up her nose and setting off towards the common room.

 

And she would not be privy to the exact moment Enid Nightshade smuggled a cauldron out of the potions lab and dragged it out across the hall using one dirty blanket and one long rope, panting slightly until she stopped by Sybil Hallow’s feet.

 

And as such, Hecate Hardbroom would only hear the smeared recounting from four little witches of how it came to be that Sybil Hallow was tutored by Mildred Hubble, Enid Nightshade, and Maud Spellbody on the inner workings of a levitation potion, how the girls created a textbook perfect potion and accidentally spilled it on Mildred Hubble’s sock, or how three witches dangled precariously from Mildred’s uniform as the girl went up and up and up, suspended by her sock and held down by the sheer force of her friends.

 

“100 lines. _I shall not practice magic outside a classroom_ ,” she shakes her head, brings Mildred down and watches as her sock continues floating higher and higher.

 

If this were any other academy, in which there was not a little witch named Mildred Hubble, with a brave and kind heart that wants nothing more than to belong, Miss Hardbroom would have been quite right in expecting a boring and undesirable day conducive to learning.

 

As it is, this is no ordinary academy, and Mildred Hubble very much belongs inside these four walls, missing sock or not. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!!! <3 <3 <3 <3


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